Tuesday: Hili dialogue

September 2, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the cruelest day: both Tuesday and the end of the Labor Day Holiday: September 2, 2025 and World Coconut Day. Remember this (see 0:48).

It’s also National Grits for Breakfast Day (yum!!), National Blueberrry Popsicle Day, Calendar Adjustment Day (to catch up to the solar year in 1752, the U.S. and U.K. decreed that September 2 was to be followed by September 14. What a mess!). Finally, it’s Victory over Japan Day, the day WWII finally ended when Japan surrendered in 1945,  Here’s Victor Jorgensen’s famous photo of an elated sailor kissing a woman in Times Square on that day.

Victor Jorgensen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 2 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The title of this NYT op-ed written by conservative Nicole Gelinas almost guaranteed that I’d put it in the Nooz: “Don’t like Mamdani? Do better.”  Its thesis is that he’s the best that Democrats can do for a NYC mayor simply because he’s competent and not insane, even though his policies seem largely unworkable.

It’s not that New York voters have suddenly become socialists in the past four years, any more than national voters suddenly became MAGA militants last fall in re-electing Donald Trump as president.

In both cases, more traditional Democrats failed to realize that it’s not enough to point out a transgressive candidate’s shortcomings. You have to offer voters something better. And few Democrats seem to be able to do that.

Despite Mr. Mamdani’s charisma and campaign prowess, he, like Mr. Trump, should be a mainstream Democrat’s dream opponent. His economic policies, like Mr. Trump’s, are transparently impractical.

Mr. Mamdani’s vague idea to open city-run grocery stores couldn’t address what’s causing high food prices. His proposal to nearly double the city’s minimum wage, to $30 an hour, ignores that the city still hasn’t recovered tens of thousands of lost retail and hospitality jobs. His promise to freeze rents on regulated apartments would only superficially limit housing costs and would make it hard for property owners to pay higher costs for fuel, labor and taxes.

Both men [Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams] are making the same mistake made by Mr. Trump’s opponents in 2016 and last year. They assume that Mr. Mamdani’s unorthodox policy ideas and personal flaws are so self-evidently disqualifying that voters will reject him if they keep hearing how bad he is.

Instead, Mr. Mamdani’s opponents are simply reminding voters that it is not just his easy manner and casual promises that make him successful: They have no winning message of their own.

Like Mr. Trump and his “make America great again” promise, Mr. Mamdani offers a simplistic message: He can decree a more affordable city, whether a decree over the rent, a decree over the grocery price or a decree over the wage.

. . . Mr. Mamdani is ahead not because voters are ignorant about his plans or his flaws or too dumb or desperate to care. Many do like his plans. But he’s mainly leading because he has run a competent, engaging campaign, and his opponents have not. Even if Mr. Mamdani is as awful as his opponents insist, campaigning against an opponent’s flaws works only if you don’t seem even worse.

Indeed, but if Mamdani is the best that Democrats can do in the next Presidential election, we’re doomed.  Newsom won’t win because he’s from California, Pritzker is too woke, and so on. The only Democrat I’m leaning towards now is Mayor Pete. But even he has been very quiet, though he’s whip-smart and did a lot as Secretary of Transportation. I think he’d made a good candidate and a good President. Yes, he’s gay, but I am not sure whether that would count against him in America (it makes no difference to me).  Or maybe someone can, like Obama, emerge from the back of the pack. I’ll take any non-insane Democrat over Trump.

*The WSJ explains why American capitalism is unique among other forms of capitalism.

. . . . Nowhere else is risk-taking so encouraged—and not coincidentally, nowhere else has innovation thrived as it has here. Both law and culture helped to shape our capitalism in ways that reflect the spirit of the American Revolution. “No taxation” was famously a cry of the colonials in Boston; less well-remembered is that the Declaration of Independence charged George III with obstructing immigration—newcomers being then as now a sparkplug of American enterprise.

To state the most basic fact of political democracy, it permits the popular will to override the establishment, merely another name for what the business professors call “creative destruction.” Thus did the automobile replace the horse; thus were punch cards voted out by mainframes; and so with minicomputers, desktops, search engines and (until the next smart fellow decamps) artificial intelligence. All of these upheavals occurred in the U.S. Term limits indeed.

Let us clear the air and stipulate that American capitalism also has the manifest flaws of democracy. It is intensely market-centric. Markets are changeable, creatures of popular will. Their verdicts are often dubious; at present, three bitcoins trade for the approximate price of the median American home. American politics have always coughed up a veritable “laundry ticket,” as Fiorello La Guardia used to say, of empty suits and frauds along with the occasional statesman. Capitalism has answered with a gallery of patent-medicine salesmen, hustlers, dreamers, meme stocks and con men. Leave it to future generations to distinguish which speculations are useful. Ambition is a summons to effort. As my corporate-lawyer father used to say, “No speculation, no railroads.”

Because it is market-centric, American capitalism is highly transactional, besotted by the short-term. Countless derivatives were invented by people who in less market-driven societies might have been the next Marie Curie. The Spectator of London reported from New York in 1884, “Millionaires in America make ‘corners’ as if they had nothing to lose, or their sons amuse themselves with ‘financing’ as if it were only an expensive game.” Whereas an Englishman “fears poverty excessively, and a Frenchman shoots himself to avoid it; an American with a million will speculate to win ten.”

One caveat. American capitalism doesn’t produce for those at the bottom. An American at the 10th percentile earns only $19,000 a year. In Europe, at least, poverty is mitigated by a richer array of social goods. For example, not only is life expectancy greater, but the poor experience less of a gap in life expectancy than the poor in America.

The U.S. remains, as Webster observed, centered on the individual. American capitalism is especially pitched toward getting capital to entrepreneurs. Last year, the U.S. registered a record 5.5 million applications for new businesses—one for every 24 households.

“It is interesting to ask why 95% of internet innovation happened in this country,” notes a wealthy investor. The American system rewards success. In a virtuous circle, talent is attracted from around the world to universities that seed the next generation. The system is also warped by risible overkill at the top. Elon Musk, whose one-eighth ownership of Tesla would seem to provide him some incentive, was awarded a $23 billion bonus to stay on the job two more years.

You decide what you value.  As I have done pretty well in life, coming out of a white-collar family, I am not eager to say I favor capitalism that leaves a lot of people poor. But, on the other hand, those innovations have been good, some of them for everyone. Think of mRNA vaccines, for example.

*Wonder what happened to renegade Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema? The same thing that happened to Tulsi Gabbard: Sinema is now working for causes beloved of Republicans.

As Democrats panic over their diminished power and struggle to curtail President Trump, one of the party’s former senators is finding lucrative opportunities in Republican-controlled Washington.

Since leaving Congress in January, Kyrsten Sinema has launched an array of projects and new jobs focused on cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence and psychedelic research.

She leads an organization that advocates for Arizona business. She is a member of the Coinbase Global Advisory Council, works at a lobbying and law firm and remains a professor at Arizona State University. She chairs an association for companies that work in AI and says the group “played a big role” in shaping some executive orders in the space.

“I worked well with the Trump administration during Trump 1.0. I’m working well with the Trump administration in Trump 2.0,” the former Arizona senator said in an interview. “That is what I’ve always done.”

Her salaries haven’t been disclosed but people aware of her projects estimate she is set to make well over a million dollars this year. Her aide declined to comment on the figure.

It isn’t abnormal for former lawmakers to cash in after leaving Congress. But Sinema’s sheer number of projects is unusual—and so are her relationships with the party she never joined.

She served a single tumultuous Senate term as a Democrat and later an independent, cutting deals on infrastructure and gun control while blocking Democrats’ efforts to raise tax rates on corporations, private-equity managers and high-income households. She cast decisive votes for Democrats’ major fiscal laws in 2021 and 2022 while the party was in the majority.

But she angered colleagues when she blocked Democrats’ push to end the 60-vote Senate filibuster threshold, limiting the party’s ability to move on immigration and election overhauls. And she did so while flouting fusty Senate conventions, at times wearing neon wigs, sequins and thigh-high boots.

I admired Sinema’s independence—who cares about her clothes, for crying out loud, when Fetterman wears shorts?—but that seemed to go along with a lack of principles.  And that lack of principles is pretty clear now: her goal seems to be to get rich, not wield power in a helpful way.

*On Sunday a federal judge blocked the deportation to their homeland of about 600 unaccompanied Guatemalan children who had entered the United States illegally.  One plane with the kids was even forced to turn around in the air.

The Trump administration on Sunday grounded planes carrying migrant children whom the White House intended to deport to Guatemala after a federal judge issued an emergency order temporarily blocking any removal of about 600 unaccompanied minors.

Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said she learned from plaintiffs that the administration was putting hundreds of unaccompanied minors onto flights on Sunday morning after she had issued an order earlier in the day temporarily barring officials from deporting 10 Guatemalan children, ages 10 to 17, named in a lawsuit to their country of origin.

“I have the government attempting to remove minor children from the country in the wee hours of the morning on a holiday weekend,” Sooknanan said during a hearing Sunday. “That’s surprising.”

She clarified at the hearing that her pause extended to cover the roughly 600 Guatemalan children at risk of deportation because the initial suit, filed by the National Immigration Law Center, sought class action status.

Immigrant rights advocates warned that the Trump administration may have violated the rights of the unaccompanied, undocumented minors. In the initial filing, the NILC argued that the administration’s actions violated the Constitution, as well as long-standing protections under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. That bipartisan law states that unaccompanied children who are not from Mexico must be allowed to see an immigration judge and given the opportunity to apply for legal protections before the government attempts to deport them to their country of origin.

“The Constitution and federal laws provide robust protections to unaccompanied minors specifically because of the unique risks they face. We are determined to use every legal tool at our disposal to force the administration to respect the law and not send any child to danger,” Efrén C. Olivares, the center’s vice president of litigation and legal strategy, said in a statement.

I wasn’t aware of this law, but it’s sensible. No matter how an undocumented child got into the U.S., it should be able to have a hearing before a judge with one possible outcome residency in the U.S.  It takes a special kind of President—a bad one—to allow small children (up to 17) to be put on planes and sent back to Guatemala. Would they be able to find their parents? How would their parents know they’ve returned?

*A bright orange nurse shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum) has been found off Tortuguero, on the east coast of Costa Rica (h/t Charles).  It appears to be caused by a combination of two mutations (see BBC excerpt below).  In that area of the world, this species is classified as “vulnerable.”

This amazing bright orange shark is so far the only one of its kind, found during a fishing trip near Tortuguero National Park in Costa Rica.

Its unusual colour is caused by something called xanthism, a condition which researchers say is extremely rare in fishes like sharks.

Publishing the pictures in the Marine Biology journal, scientists say that this is the first ever time that a shark of this colour has been found.

Xanthism is caused by pigments in the skin, which is something that all animals have that gives their skin a certain colour.

The condition happens when creatures have a loss of darker pigments, meaning that a yellow or orange colour comes through more strongly.

This shark is even more unique because it also has white eyes, which researchers say could mean it also has albinism.

This is another condition that leads to little or no production of a pigment called melanin, which can cause the colour of a creature’s skin, hair and eyes to be white.

Here’s the paper in Marine Biodiversity. Click title to read:

Here’s a figure from the paper, with the caption at the bottom. It had reached adult size but it’s not clear whether they let the shark go with the hook still in its mouth:

First documented case of xanthism in nurse sharks (Ginglymostoma cirratum) from Costa Rican waters. a Location where the G. cirratum was captured near Tortuguero National Park; b–d Various views of the live shark during release; e The shark being released, with the hook (red arrow) visible in its mouth. Total length (TL): approximately 200 cm. Photos: Garvin Watson

. . . and a video showing this strikingly-colored animal.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, things are still troublesome:

Hili: We need an alternative meaning of life.
Andrzej: You’re right, the old one broke down.

In Polish:

Hili: Potrzeba nam alternatywnego sensu życia.
Ja: Masz rację ten stary się połamał.

*******************

Here’s an angry pepper from Ginger K. via Bored Panda:

From Cat Memes:

From I Love Ducks:

I’ve almost given up on Masih, who seems to have stopped tweeting.  But JKR has a nice tweet in which she lays out her beliefs on sex and gender and asks those who hate her to discuss which ones they disagree with. Be sure to look at the whole list.

From Luana. Pinker and colleagues become the victim of ridiculous demands by editors:

From Malcolm: D*g and cat friends, though I’m not sure this isn’t immoral:

The guy who stole the kid’s hat from a tennis player has responded, and I like the guy even less now. He’s threatening lawsuits. But, thank Ceiling Cat, the kid got another signed hat!

Here’s the original Hat Snatch:

When a boring job becomes fun:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This Polish Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived at the camp. He was four years old. Had he lived he would have been 86 yesterday.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-09-02T10:42:48.232Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, a squid (genus Taningia) that looks like a hand:

shoutout to this iNaturalist user who appears to be an ROV pilot in the gulf of mexico and posts occasional biological observations, including A GODDAMN TANINGIA ATTACKING THE ROBOT ARM OF THE ROVwww.inaturalist.org/observations…

— Jeff Day (@jeffday.bsky.social) 2025-08-31T02:32:21.257Z

Of this one Matthew says, “Another step towards a Bad Place.”

Ashli Babbitt, the Jan. 6 rioter killed while storming the Capitol, will now receive a funeral with military honors

— Phil Lewis (@phillewis.bsky.social) 2025-08-28T16:10:30.387Z

30 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Regarding Pinker’s tweet, what does “assigned at birth” mean anyway? When I popped out of my mother, the doctors saw my dick and balls and said, “That’s a boy.” They didn’t “assign” anything. They SAW who and what I was and am. Yes? No? Am I not understanding what this “assigned” business is all about?
    [Moments later before my editing time runs out]
    I guess I’m not hip to the language. Gemini tells me this about the definition of “assigned”: “classify (a person) as having a particular sex or gender, especially on the basis of their genitals at birth.” Then this is given: “not all people who were assigned male at birth identify as men.”
    I guess I have an “old fashioned” understanding of the word, like a Little League manager designating who is going to play what position: “Okay, I’m assigning Barry to play catcher, Johnny as the first baseman,” and so on.

    2. The premise is that a baby might “really” be a girl but the doctor incorrectly assigns her as male because he sees her penis and testicles and jumps to an erroneous conclusion based on outmoded teaching. If he communicates this incorrect assignment, the parents will raise the child as a boy and will cause irreparable harm to her if they resist the child’s eventual self-discovery that she is really a girl. “But the doctor said…”

      The Little League coach might assign Johnny to right field, but if Johnny knows himself he is really a pitcher, the parents will have to question Authority and get the coach to affirm his self-identity.

    3. As I understand it, the term “assigned at birth” originated back in the bad old days when a child born with ambiguous genitals might be “assigned” one or the other sex (usually “girl,” since it’s difficult to surgically create a penis,) and then subjected to surgery and gender indoctrination.

      Trans activists took a term used in connection with disorders of sexual development and applied it to normal births. Now the idea is that boyhood and girlhood, womanhood and manhood, are matters of some inherent existential “identity” rather than sex. And sex itself is framed as a matter of which genitals a person “happens” to have been born with–as if sex were as inconsequential as bellybuttons: are you an innie or an outie? Who cares?

  2. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
    There are conditions of blindness so voluntary that they become complicity. -Paul Bourget, novelist (2 Sep 1852-1935)

  3. I am not sure on what basis the NYT declares Mamdani “competent.” He has no executive experience or track record by which to judge that. While he’s ahead in the polls, and thus might be said, as they do, to be running competent campaign, that’s hardly the same thing. It sounds to me like another case of the most convenient warm body.

    1. Comment by Greg Mayer

      The NY Times does not think Mamdani is competent. They went all in on anybody but Mamdani for the primary, but couldn’t quite bring themselves to endorse Cuomo. It will be interesting to see what endorsement they make for the general election.

      GCM

      1. Fortunately a lot of what he says he can do in the city are outside his jurisdiction (his terrible idea of free busses for one), most rent control stuff, state supermarket idiocy etc. The fact he doesn’t KNOW all this shows he’s a liar or conman or both.

        Which doesn’t mean he can’t do a LOT of damage.
        A $30 min. wage would be a disaster ….and how he will be able to let criminals free could ruin us. The first bidonville of tents outside my building, outdoor shitting, etc. (the San Franciscoization if you will) I’ll be moving to another place. Hopefully temporarily until this Mandami madness passes.

        D.A.
        NYC

      1. Note that tribune.com and tribune.com.pk websites are totally distinct. “.pk” is the country code for Pakistan. Some sneak on the internet with $10 and an agenda can buy a website domain and that does not make it a reliable source. A reliable source is a place with a valuable reputation of long standing that it won’t easily squander. That is a website name chosen to fool people into thinking it is a well known news source.
        If something is this interesting, a reliable source will cover it shortly.
        For example, places will often get clicks by lying that a famous person died. If you search and no reliable source has reported it, give it some time because it is probably a hoax. Waiting until confirmation is my approach.
        I have read thousands of posts here and I consider you a reliable source. Because people rightly believe things you write, consider an update of this entry. Most will miss the comments section.

    2. He has denied the aggressive statement. Which doesn’t mean it is (or isn’t) a hoax. There are other aggressive statements in Polish purporting to be by his wife. Anyway, even the statement he has blessed as authentic is weasely.

  5. Ashlee Babbitt’s military career was hindered by her own bad behavior. She by no means deserves honors. The officer who shot her was cleared of wrongdoing. She wasn’t murdered. She had to cross a bunch of clear barriers to get into a situation where she was shot. No sympathy here.

  6. Babbitt died trying to overturn the Constitution, not defending it as per her military oath. I wonder how things would have turned out if the police had opened fire sooner.

    1. I would guess that in her mind she was defending the Constitution. That was “her truth” in woke-progressive speak.

  7. Conventional wisdom is that black Democrats who vote won’t vote for a homosexual man. If Pete Buttigieg emerges as the best candidate likely to beat whomever the GOP puts up, and I see no reason why he couldn’t, this might be a come-to-Jesus moment for the Democrats. LBJ’s gloating prediction, “We’ll have their votes for 200 years,” might fall a bit short, but, hey.

    What I liked about Mr. Buttigieg, especially in retrospect, was that he seemed from his brief appearance in the 2020 primary to be so normal.

    1. “… he seemed from his brief appearance in the 2020 primary to be so normal.”

      You know his father “specialized in modern European literature and theory.[10] He was translator and editor of the three-volume English edition of Marxist philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, published from 1992 to 2007 with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.[11] He was a founding member and president of the International Gramsci Society, founded to facilitate communication among those who study Gramsci.[12] ”

      (Source Wikipedia).

    1. VJ Day is recognized on Sept. 2 in the U.S., as it marks the day that Japan formally surrendered.

      1. Weird. I have never heard of the Sept. 2 date for VJ Day and I’m a really old guy. It looks like there have been 3 separate days celebrated as VJ-Day over time. Thanks for the news!

  10. “Calendar Adjustment Day (to catch up to the solar year in 1752, the U.S. and U.K. decreed that September 2 was to be followed by September 14. What a mess!)”

    But the U.S. didn’t yet exist in 1752, and “United Kingdom” didn’t become the formal designation of the mother country until the Act of Union with Ireland in 1800, so it would be more accurate to say Great Britain and her colonies.

    Also, Britain was simply catching up with the rest of Europe, most of which had adopted the (astronomically more accurate) Gregorian calendar 170 years earlier. Nonetheless, there were riots in the streets of London as people demanded their “lost” 11 days back.

    One curious and amusing side effect of the 1752 calendar adjustment was to push the start of the British tax year from March 25 to April 5, so that people living through the change wouldn’t be required to pay a full calendar year’s tax on only 354 days of labour. The tax year was again adjusted by a day in 1800, which would have been a leap year in the old calendar, but wasn’t in the new one. By 1900, nobody felt strongly enough to repeat that adjustment, and to this day, the British tax year runs from April 6 to April 5 of the following year.

    Where did March 25 come from? Well, that was New Year’s Day in England, from medieval times until 1752. The year changed on March 25, not January 1, much toi the later confusion of historians and amateur genealogists. Debts, rents, and taxes all had to be paid on that day. In the old church calendar, it was Lady Day, one of the quarter days.

    1. An essay by Isaac Asimov (I don’t remember the title; I read it decades ago) said that one reason people rioted over the calendar change was that landlords demanded a full month’s rent, not giving a discount for the lost 11 days.

    2. I’m just glad they fixed the problem in 1700s. Can you imagine trying to fix it now? Y2K was a tiny blip compared to taking out 11 days.

  11. I live in the deep red boonies of Texas. While Buttigieg appears to be a kind, sane, sort of a grown-up he doesn’t stand a chance of getting a vote here. Democrats are going to have to make some kind of compromise with the political reality we live in if they want to win elections.

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